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Retail Workbench Research and Education Center

Examples of Decision Support Prototypes

Promotional Sales Forecasting
Understanding customers' response to promotions is essential for managing inventory and assessing the impact of promotions. This prototype combines factors such as base sales, seasonality, price, and advertising efforts to predict sales, using both historical data and learning from new sales as the season progresses.

Retail Testing System
The systematic design, implementation, and analysis of experiments provides and opportunity to better understand the cause-and-effect relationships underlying sales and profitability. While developed in the context of merchandise testing, this prototype could also be used to assess numerous other issues, including fixture placement, store layout, price levels, and point-of-purchase displays.

Clearance Markdown Management
Effective clearance-markdown policies are of critical importance to overall profitability. This system provides recommendations for both the timing and depth of markdowns. It incorporates specific features, such as the inventory to be cleared, the target "outdate," the salvage value to the merchandise, the predicted customer response to markdowns, and seasonal trends.